Michael Chabon on The Phantom Tollbooth

A fiftieth anniversary of the classic book by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, is due out this October. Author Chabon captures the essence of what makes books so important in his introduction to that edition. 'The book appeared in my life as mysteriously as the titular tollbooth itself, brought to our house one night as a gift for me by some old friend of my father’s whom I had never met before, and never saw again. Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Milo’s tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious—the most phantasmal—is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.' More...